


like a dog at the shrine of your lies

by weasleyspotter



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:45:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7874950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleyspotter/pseuds/weasleyspotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Grace makes another choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a dog at the shrine of your lies

**Author's Note:**

> The last time I wrote fic into the late night, was a very long time ago. But damn Tommy/Grace. I just binged the entire first season in 3 days, and I'm still reeling from it. I know what lies ahead, but I prefer to live in the AUs where Grace stands by Tommy's side and helps him with everything. 
> 
> Forgive me for any spelling or grammar errors, my vision is swimming at this point. Also forgive if any of the details are a bit off, I'm not very good at 20s slang, and I'm still getting used to this show. So while I know what happens in season 1 and some of what happens in the subsequent seasons, I don't know everything. Maybe there's bits of characterization that's a bit off, sorry, I just want these two to be happy. 
> 
> Also I took bits of dialogue from 1x05 and 1x06, but hopefully I've twisted it enough to offer something a little different.

i.

“If I had, I never would have let it happen.”

Inspector Campbell’s hand caresses her face softly, and she feels the shiver go up her spine.

It’s in the eyes. That was the thing she learnt being barmaid. You could tell a lot about a man if you bothered to look into his eyes. Harry had told her that she was too nice to work at the Garrison, that everyone would assume that she was a prostitute. And he’d been right in some ways. Many of the men tried their luck on her, and it all it took was a single glance into their eyes for her to know whether or not they intended her harm.

She’d let the harmless ones go with sweet remark, a polite turn down. It was the men who had that gleam in their eyes, the one that told her that they would do anything to have her, the obsession.

(She’d never been able to fully read Tommy’s eyes.

But she _knew_ him.)

She pulls away from Campbell’s touch and reassesses her situation. She had been a fool for trusting him, for thinking that there was a chance in hell that he’d let Tommy go.

“Grace?” Campbell’s voice breaks her out of her stupor.

Campbell had always claimed a fatherly affection for her, but she should have known better. He’d insisted on trying to keep her out of harm’s way, he'd shown more concern that he ought to. And she stupidly believed him when he expressed concern, because he was her father's friend. Still he'd put her in the lion's den because he couldn’t help it, he was greedy for validation.

“I...,” she searches blindly for the right words. “It was me who killed them.”

Campbell takes a step towards her, “You’ve been living with beasts.”

She resists the urge to snap at him, to tell him that he was wrong. “It was the beast that tried to stop me.” She thinks briefly of Tommy, of the man she loves. She’s done so much damage, she can at least protect him in this moment. “I believe last night something inside me changed. I no longer feel the need to avenge my father. The hatred I brought with me here has gone. And therefore my reasons for joining the service.”

“You want to resign?” Campbell’s face registers his shock.

“I cannot keep this up any longer,” she lets some of her panic seep into her voice, using her skills that he'd once praised against him. It works as Campbell’s face twists with pity. “I fear if I stay here any longer, I will become someone I no longer recognize. And I fear the same for you, Inspector.”

He gives her a short nod, “I understand, Grace.”

Her heart pounds fiercely. “I’m sorry I could not get you your guns, Sir.” She moves to turn away, but his voice stops her.

“Grace, wait.” He takes something out of his coat pocket, and her stomach drops. “If you truly intend to resign, then I’m no longer your superior officer, and you’re no longer my subordinate. And therefore,” he opens the small box to reveal a ring, “regulation permits me to offer you this.”

She feels like a caged animal, her eyes are fixed on the ring, but her feet are telling her to move. She wills for some calm, as Campbell continues on.

“I am a simple man. But a good man. And my admiration for you has turned into love. I don’t ask for love in return, just recognition that we are like minds with shared values. Grace, will you marry me?”

Before Tommy, it might have been a proposal that she would have cherished. Before Tommy, she might have even accepted. But she knows her equal, she will not find it in Campbell.

“Mr. Campbell,” she says gently. “You deserve better.”

His face contorts in anger, “Is it him between us? The beast that brought us here?”

“It is me,” she says, steel in her words. “I’m sorry, Mr. Campbell. My resignation will be with you in the morning.”

ii.

In another life, naive hope might have driven her to tell Campbell about the guns.

It’s not that she believes that Tommy’s doing the right thing by using the guns as leverage. And despite the knowledge that the right thing to do would be to turn him in, she can’t bring herself to. She wants him to win. She wants him to get everything he wants. Even if that means she has to let him do the wrong thing to get there. Besides, if there's one thing Tommy taught her, it's that right and wrong is a matter of perspective. 

She believes him when he claims that the guns are a means to the end. She believes that he’s going to defeat Billy Kimber, that one day, he’s going to rule over the whole goddamn thing and have everything he wants.

She just hopes, that when it’s all over, he’ll still believe her.

iii.

She resolves to tell him everything, but it’s him who finds her first.

He strides into the Garrison, right after Harry’s told her that the police are after him. It only takes her a moment to realize that the police are after him because of her, and that he’s here for her. She follows him into the back room and listens as he explains that he’s got to lay low for awhile but when he gets back he's going to tell her things, and she questions why he came here, even though she knows why, because she needs to hear him say it.

His brother bursts in and tells them that police are in the lane, and Tommy looks at her, and she knows he doesn’t have a way out.

She grabs him by the hand. “Come with me.”

iv.

Her apartment feels smaller with him in it.

She busies herself with making the tea, but it’s for no use. She’s very aware that he’s standing a few feet away from her, examining her closely. She can feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up under the heat of his gaze.

He flirts with her, asking her to dance, and she plays along, letting him pull her into his embrace and twirls her around her small apartment. She feels the weight of her lies pressing down on her. Every moment she doesn’t tell him the truth, she feels her stomach twisting some more.

Tommy pulls away from her slightly to stare at her, “Grace?” He asks lightly, though his gaze is more intense. He knows something is wrong.

“Tommy,” she hates that her voice breaks on his name, “We need to talk.”

Mercifully he doesn’t say anything, he simply pulls away from her and sits on her bed. She sits beside him, willing herself not to burst into tears.

It takes her a few moments to form the words. Finally, “I’ve been lying to you,” she says quietly.

She goes from the beginning. She tells him of her father, the brave officer that was cruelly gunned down by the IRA. She tells him about Campbell who approached her at her father’s funeral and offered her chance to avenge her father. She speaks about her training as an agent of the Crown, and the few missions she's had before she came to Brimingham. And then one day, Campbell had offered her this job because he thought the guns might end up with the IRA. 

(She doesn't tell him that he was her mission, because he already knows.)

As she speaks, she can almost feel him pull away from her. That cold look takes over his face, and she pushes forward, rushing the words out, knowing that if she doesn't say something, she'll lose him.

“I know where the guns are, Tommy.” She says, inching towards him slowly. “I found out today. But I didn’t tell Campbell, I met him, but I couldn’t. I resigned instead.” She speaks slowly, like she’s talking to a child, because she needs him to understand. “Do you know why?” She places her hands on either side of his face and forces him to look at her. “Here it comes, Tommy, I love you.”

His piercing blue eyes are hard to look at, but she holds his gaze. “And there it goes, Grace. Away it goes.” He pulls out of her grasp. “How can I believe anything you say?”

It’s the cruelest thing he’s said to her, and yet, it’s fair. “What exactly can I say?” She asks him helplessly.

He lets out a short bitter laugh, “I do not know, Grace.”

He stands up and makes his way to the door. She thinks that he’s going to leave without saying anything more. But at the last second, when he’s half way out the door, he turns towards her.

“We can say it as much as we like, but there’s no chance.” He says, almost sadly.

v.

She packs up her bags the next morning and sends her resignation to Campbell’s office with a boy from across the street, because she cannot look at him again.

She takes the other letter she wrote, and makes her way to Tommy’s house. She’d found the place easily, and when she knocks on the door, an older, haughty woman opened it. She eyes Grace coolly, before stepping aside.

As Grace steps through the threshold, the woman tells her. “He’s not here.” And Grace knows they’re probably moving the guns, because even though she told him she wouldn’t tell the police, he no longer had any reason to believe her.

“I came to give him this.” It occurs to her as she holds the letter out to the woman, whom she knows is Polly, that she’s probably making a mistake by giving it to her. She’d heard many a thing about Polly Gray. And she knows if those are true, Polly would probably not give the letter to Tommy.

“You really did fall for him, didn’t you?” Polly muses wryly, twirling Grace’s folded up letter between her fingers. “I pity you.”

Grace flinches, but quickly straightens herself, she refuses to show her weakness in front of this woman.

Polly grabs a bottle off the table and pours her a glass of whiskey. “You saved his life the night the coppers came, that’s why we’re drinking, not fighting.” She says indicating to the drink.

Grace takes a small sip, and because she has to ask, “What was he like before the war?”

And Polly tells her, Grace tries to draw a image in her head of a Thomas before the war. She wonders what it would have been like if she’d been a simple girl, a barmaid, who met him before. Would he have fallen for her still?

“You know,” Polly says thoughtfully, “when this is all over, he might still forgive you. He might take you in. You can never tell with men.” Her eyes sharpen as she stares Grace down, “But I should tell you something, I will never forgive you. Or accept you. Or take you in. And it’s me who runs the business of the heart in this family. You may have saved Tommy’s life, but if you’re not gone from this city by tomorrow, I’ll kill you myself.”

It’s a dismissal, and Grace’s not stupid enough to stick around any longer. But she still cannot leave without say anything. So she stands up and walks towards the door, and when she’s almost there, she turns around. “Maybe what really upsets you is the thought that one day you might lose him.”

And then she leaves.

vi. 

In her letter, she tells Tommy that he’s always been a gambling man, and a man like that should know that there’s always a chance.

And he believed there was a chance for them, she’ll be in London for a week.

vii.

She budgets what little money she has carefully.

If Inspector Campbell had survived whatever Tommy had done to him, he’d have her inheritance that her father left her on a lock down, and she’d have to go back to Dublin to retrieve it. But she has no desire for that.

Instead she uses most of her money to book passage on a ship leaving to New York. She frustrates the Dockmaster when she hems and haws over a date. She can't leave before the week is over as foolish as it is. 

She doesn’t even know if Tommy got her letter, and even then, she doesn’t know if he’ll come for her. She doesn’t blame him if he doesn’t.

But she’s tired of blaming herself.

On the morning of that her ship is set to leave, she slowly gathers her things. And right before she walks out the door, she resolves to leave everything behind. The past is the past, and she needed to move forward. She’d mucked up things with Tommy, but she deserved to find happiness again.

So she opens the door, and on the other side is Tommy.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She exhales sharply.

“I got your letter,” he says, holding up a severely creased piece of paper.

“I’d wondered,” she says irritably, trying to stifle the hope that bubbled inside of her. “You couldn’t have just written in response?”

He ignores that, taking a step towards her. “I came to tell you that I can’t come with you. The prospect of New York is interesting, but I’ve worked so hard for this day. I have responsibilities here for the people I need to protect and for people I love.”

The little hope that had bloomed within her at the sight of him, shatter instantly. She tries to put the pieces of herself back together. “I understand,” she says slowly. What she doesn’t understand, however, why he couldn’t have written have written this in a letter, and saved her the struggle of having to maintain her dignity in front of him.

“Polly tells me you fell in love for real and Polly is never wrong about matters of the heart.” He looks her, and she sees it for the first time, the hope hidden in those blue, blue eyes. “So I came to ask you, if you would come back with me. It won’t be easy,” he warns her. “The trust that was lost will be hard earned. But if you meant it,” he trails off.

It’s a choice, and one that she ponders for a moment. It would be easier to step on a ship and leave to New York. To leave everything behind, like she had decided. If she went back to Birmingham, she’d have to work up from the bottom, earn her place in the Peaky Blinders. And even then, it wasn’t guaranteed that everyone would trust her again, not like before, and that included Tommy. She’d have to resign herself to the not-so legal aspects of Tommy’s business, because despite what he says, she knows there will always be a part of his business that won’t be legal.

But it comes down to this: Tommy.

She lets out a short relieved laugh, and surges forward, kissing him square on the mouth. He responds eagerly, wrapping his arms around her waist. She’s giddy with the knowledge that they’re both on the path to forgiveness, so when she says “Damn you, Thomas Shelby” it doesn’t nearly have the bit she intends it to have.

She pulls away slightly to stare at him, she tries to ask if he really meant it, if he truly wanted her to come back. But she can’t form the words.

Somehow, Tommy knows. His arms tighten around her. “Let’s go home, Grace.”

 _Home_ , she thought with a sigh, it had a nice ring to it.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, please leave a kudos and comment if you enjoyed this. I know the Peaky Blinders has a small fandom, and Tommy/Grace is a even smaller niche, but I've always been a sucker for the small ships. So I foresee a number of fix-it fics in my future.
> 
> And if anyone wants more, I could definitely write a bit more in this AU.


End file.
